A Familiar Foe
by Most Wicked
Summary: After nearly a century of peaceul existance for humanity, the alien menace arises once again!


AUTHOR'S NOTE/DISCLAIMER  
  
This story of mine is based on the computer game X-Com Apocalypse, a game released in 1997 by MicroProse. In no way I am attempting to challenge the aforementioned company's copyright on this game. Apocalypse is the 3rd game in the X-Com series, and it takes place in 2084, about 50 years after X-Com: Terror from the Deep (also MicroProse property).  
  
My story begins approximately when Apocalypse begin.  
  
I also want to point out that this is a single-chapter short story, and no additional chapters will follow this one.  
  
Let's begin, shall we?  
  
***A FAMILIAR FOE  
  
Alister McCloud cursed loudly as some asshole suddenly cut his path at way over 80 km/h.  
  
McCloud punched the horn on his steering wheel with great annoyance.  
  
"Asshole!!", he shouted. "You hybrid sonuvabitch! Bastard!".  
  
He wasn't in a very good mood today.  
  
He was returning from the hospital where his daughter was hospitalized. She had a moderate concussion after falling from a 5 meter altitude, when the antigrav system of the MagTube through which she travelled suddenly failed. Such a thing could happen once in a million years, as MagTubes were the darn safest and cheapest transportation method in Mega-Primus. McCloud was planning to sell his car. He couldn't quite remember why the hell did he bought it for the first place. Costing a fortune, it was slow, dangerous, and generally annoying commodity.  
  
It was also painted red.  
  
McCloud REALLY hated red.  
  
Like this day wasn't bad enough as it was, the car driver he horned to earlier suddenly stopped right infront of McCloud.  
  
He started horning madly.  
  
"C'mon piece of hybrid shit! Come on! Move you fuckin' ugly cart out of the way!", he shouted through the open window at the top of his lungs.  
  
Suddenly, all four doors of the green-painted car infront of him opened.  
  
He was about to shout another curse, when suddenly, he froze in shock.  
  
"Oh shit...", was all he managed to say.  
  
Four people stepped out of the green car. All had Diablo insignia tattoed on their arms.  
  
And the worst thing of it all, the driver was a fucking mutant. And McCloud just called him a fucking hybrid...  
  
McCloud gulped.  
  
He couldn't see any way he could get out of this situation with all bones intact.  
  
Other drivers behind him started to horn too, unpatiently demanding of them to let them pass and move on to their bussiness. But they all shut up very quickly as they saw the huge men with Diablo smell all over them.  
  
The hybrid driver opened the door of McCloud's car.  
  
"So, buddy, you don't like hybrids, eh?", he asked with a friendly tone that couldn't fool anyone.  
  
He crouched and put his face close to McCloud's. "Why being so... violent? After all, we are all HUMAN BEINGS, right?"  
  
Sweat formed visibly on McCloud's forehead. The staring eyes of the hybrid could remind a man unfamiliar with Sectoids of a huge insect eyes.  
  
Of course, not a single man on Earth was so ignorant as not to know who Sectoids were and how they look. Everyone knew how they abducted thousands of humans nearly a century ago, right out of their beds, every night. How they performed mutilations and experiments on these people. How certain women, with the right genetical heritage, were artificially impregnated with Sectoid fetuses.  
  
The result was the hybrid Human/Sectoid beings.  
  
Their original purpose was to spy for the Sectoids, to infiltrate human society and promote the perverted goals of the aliens at Cydonia.  
  
But with the destruction of the Brain, the hybrids have lost their purpose in this world.  
  
They couldn't live underground forever, and eventually they appeared in public, terrifying people with their unhuman facial traits. They retained a completely human body, sometimes with four fingers. But they had Sectoid eyes, what was extremely unnerving and disturbing to ordinary human beings. That's why the hybrids were badly discriminated in Mega-Primus these days. The feeble, barely funded organization known as Mutant Alliance tried to change the situation, but all was in vain.  
  
The fear of the Sectoids was deeply burried within people's mentality all over the world.  
  
With the lately renewed alien attacks on remote deep space colonies, humanity could not forget that it shared this region of space with another race, probably a lot stronger and meaner than itself.  
  
And McCloud found himself staring right into the huge menacing eyes of a hybrid, his face only an inch or so from his own.  
  
Suddenly, he felt a sharp stab in his head. His body started to convulse randomly as the hybrid's mind tapped into his own.  
  
The hybrids were not feared by other people only for their eyes, but mainly for their renown psionic abilities as well. Many hybrids could infiltrate people's minds even without assistance from any mind-amplifying device.  
  
McCloud felt like he was being tortured. His head was humming with alien presence.  
  
It was always difficult for people to tolerate the presence of other people's mind in their own. This hybrid wasn't a Sectoid, he was a human, and yet his mind was alien enough for McCloud so that he became completely disoriented, not remembering who he really was, a mid-aged man born in Ireland, father to 2 children, moving to the city almost immediately after it was founded, or a young hybrid, born and raised to a hybrid father in Mexico until moving to Mega-Primus very recently. His mind was a complete salad of thoughts and false memories.  
  
But that wasn't the worst. Nope.  
  
The hybrid was actively ATTACKING McCloud's mind, causing immense physical pain.  
  
The hybrid's human friends grinned evilly as McCloud's urine spread over his pants, the overall effect of the psionic attack somewhat similar to that of an epileptic seizure.  
  
But suddenly, he stopped.  
  
Everything stopped, including the road traffic.  
  
Even the air traffic seemed to go slower, as the drivers realized what their eyes were seeing.  
  
A strange rift has opened up right above the road McCloud and his tormentors from the Diablo gang were standing on (in McClouds case, lying in his car would be more appropriate). This portal started to grow with a humming sound, and a perfect triangle appeared from it. It was apparently just an image, not a real, corporeal form, as suddenly there was a bright flash, and something emerged from the triangle's center.  
  
It was a saucer-like shape, with many random lumps spewn upon it's surface, to achieve a somewhat organic appearance.  
  
The thing, rotating slowly, started to drift aside, lowering as it did.  
  
Suddenly, in a bright flash, a beam shot out from the object, striking at a nearby air-taxi, sending it crashing down in flames. As it impacted the road not 10 meters away from McCloud and the gang, ground cars flew in every direction and explosions rocked the air.  
  
The saucer wouldn't stop at that.  
  
No, it would shoot down anything it could detect around it, ground-based and aerial targets alike.  
  
Another 10 minutes and 37 death victims has passed before a trio of Valkyrie interceptors appeared, launching a salvo of missiles at the alien craft.  
  
As the big missiles connected, the saucer crashed into a nearby school building, causing it, and a nearby MagTube full of people, to collapse.  
  
---  
  
---  
  
LOCATION: XCOM HQ  
  
TIME: TWO DAYS AFTER THE INITIAL DIMENTIONAL GATE APPEARANCE  
  
He flipped a page in the latest Xcom report.  
  
Xcom. By now, it was a combat unit by name only. And not for the first time in history did that happen...  
  
It was actually DISMANTLED after the victory over the original alien invasion force in 2001, only to be restored again when the remaining aliens here, on Earth, based in the underwater base-city of T'leth, started to terrorize Earth's ships at sea. That threat was neutralized almost 50 years ago, but now, for the third time in history, Xcom was being called forth once again to fight the extraterrestrial menace.  
  
Many experts, seing the social decay and increase in crime rates in the past few months, concluded that it couldn't have happened without some outside intentional interference, and the best candidates for this sort of thing were as always, the aliens.  
  
The Mega-Primus senat dissmissed that as a mere educated guess at first, but after the appearance of that alien craft from the dimentional gate, it secretly allocated funding to X-Com, and ordered to investigate the matter.  
  
As Xcom was suddenly called for action, it's scientists have already started to study the recovered alien equipment, as well as the weird gates.  
  
Actually, in the case of the former, there was not much to study.  
  
The alien saucer has self-destructed before the field agents arrived, leaving only a few damaged hull samples, and visual records of its weapons and its destruction, recorded by numerous police security camera's from different angles.  
  
It appeared that the familiar foe from space has returned to haunt humanity again...  
  
Nicolas Sparks, the newly appointed Chief Commander of the lone Xcom facility, located on the outskirts of Mega-Primus, known as the Slum areas, turned his attention towards the holovision set in the room.  
  
"This morning", started the reporter of the afternoon news edition, "Megapol recieved a very strange report from a certain young man, Andrew Reed. Andrew...", she started to interview the young boy on holovision.  
  
As she continued to interview the kid, Sparks' eyes grew increasingly wide.  
  
"Well I saw, I dunno...", said Andrew, his face locked in a close-up of the three cameras, causing a 3D effect. 'Not quite as impressive as Sensovision', Sparks pondered, still not suspecting the words to come, 'but nice nonetheless'. "Well", continued the kid, "It was... something big, blue, and with VERY big teeth. I only took a single glimpse on this thing, but I could swear it wasn't from this world. Perhaps a new kind of alien, I dunno..."  
  
At this point Sparks was already up and running to the nearest comunicator set.  
  
After a few minutes of intense talking, officers from Megapol, a corporation that served the police role in Mega-Primus, has confirmed the report.  
  
It was not a mere fraud of the press.  
  
There was a serious possibility of alien infiltration in the city.  
  
After half-an-hour, an air-car and a blazer bike landed near the kid's, Andrew's, apartment.  
  
Like nearly all buildings of Mega-Primus, this one was modelled after the 20th century 50's, and had a certain appealing style, unlike the boxy skyscrapers of most other remaining cities around the world.  
  
Mega-Primus was indeed a VERY unique and extraordinary city, in many aspects.  
  
Agent Garner knocked on Andrew's door.  
  
His mother opened.  
  
"Yes, how may I help you?", she asked a bit fearfully. These were, after all, quite worrying times...  
  
"I am agent Garner, this is agent Withman", the other two agents have remained behind, watching the building's entrance. Garner than flashed his borrowed Megapol badge. It was still early to publicly reveal Xcom's revival.  
  
"Yes officers? What do you want?", she asked. Her mouth was a thin line of worry.  
  
"We are here to see your son. We need to interrogate him about the thing he saw this morning".  
  
"Of course, come in please. Andy is in his room, I'll call him in a second". With these words she opened the door wide, waited for the two men to come in, then went somewhere to another part of the house.  
  
Garner and Whitman waited politely for her to show up with the kid.  
  
They waited a few minutes, but she was still somewhere in another room.  
  
Whitman already offered to go and call her, when Garner detected movement from the corner of his eye.  
  
"Look out!", he shouted, as he drew his standard issue Megapol Lawpistol and pointed it to the direction of the movement.  
  
Something small and brown was sprinting toward the two men sitting in the living room, from the direction of the balcony. This something then jumped into the air, right at Whitman's surprised face!  
  
Garner reacted with a lightning speed, shooting at the blurry figure.  
  
It fell to the floor with a horrible screech, forcing both men to clamp their ears in pain.  
  
Whitman was still alive but pretty shocked.  
  
"What the fuck was that!?!", he asked, eyes wide.  
  
"I don't know buddy, It sure as hell looks like an alien..."  
  
They both crouched beside the dead figure.  
  
Garner shot it once again, just to make sure it was really dead, but it didn't screech again.  
  
"Let's get the fuck outta here Rob", Garner said aloud. "I have that baaaad feeling right now. Every time I have it, something bad happe..."  
  
At that same moment a knife went flying through the air toward Garner's head. Fortunately for him, he was just starting to stand up from his crouched position on the floor, what caused the blade to miss by inches, and to hit the wall harmlessly.  
  
Both men spun around to see what attacked them, and were surprised as a pretty human figure charged at them wordlessly, knocking Whitman to the ground.  
  
"Andrew! What the f..." he didn't get to finish the sentence. Andrew pulled out a huge iron hammer, and swung it backwards, preparing to land it on Whitman's head.  
  
Garner's gun was still in his hand. He reacted purely by reflex, his arm jumping out and his finger pulling the trigger before he had a chance to think about his actions.  
  
The Armor Piercing bullet of the hand gun went through the boy's head like butter. Blood sprayed everywhere as he collapsed to the floor, his hammer falling out of his hands.  
  
Garner looked on the kid's mother, expecting to see signs of shock, but was surprised to meet a completly emotionless face.  
  
A mother sees her son shot through his head, and isn't reacting in any way? No crying? No cursing?  
  
Garner have seen many kinds of reactions to death on the faces of different people, but this... this kind of reaction (or lack of thereof) was a trait of psychopats alone...  
  
Suddenly, the woman launched herself toward garner.  
  
It wasn't a charge of anger - her face remained completly emotionless as before.  
  
Garner just stood her, watching in complete horror.  
  
Just as she was mere feet away, he saw something... something in her eyes... She was inhuman. Garner could feel it instinctivly. Perhaps she was under alien mental control of some kind, but human? No.  
  
She leaped toward him, when he noticed a shining object in her hand... an electrical shocker!  
  
He didn't have any time to react! In a fraction of a second, she would...  
  
A single shot was heard, and the woman dropped to the floor, with a lethal chest wound.  
  
Whitman raised himself off the floor, with his own Lawpistol in hand.  
  
"Thanks buddy!", Garner whispered. "I almost bought the farm a second ago..."  
  
"Aww it was only a shocker, man!"  
  
"I know, but she was definetly insane! She could've stabbed me or shoot me with my own weapon while I'd lay crippled on the floor..."  
  
They both started to search the apartment carefully.  
  
Whitman has noticed it first. A small brown corpse, lying near Andy's bed. It was the same creature that attacked him earlier today.  
  
They quickly searched the rest of the apartment, and discovered two things.  
  
The first was another body of a small brown creature, lying right on Andrew mother's pillow this time.  
  
The second was Andrew's father and big brother.  
  
Or what little had remained of them.  
  
Blood was sprayed all around the bathroom. Both agents tried to resist to the urge to vomit on the spot.  
  
But they've been in worse situations before.  
  
They quickly examined the corpses, and found that they were bearing ordinary kitchen knife marks.  
  
"It were them... a family murder..." Garner whispered.  
  
They searched the rest of the apartment as quickly as they could manage, then went downstairs, to their waiting friends.  
  
Only their friends were now pretty busy at doing something else...  
  
Whitman and Garner heard the firefight already on the 3rd floor, and started to run madly, hopping four and five stairs at a time, Whitman, being shorter than Garner, almost falled twice.  
  
As they reached the building's exit, they almost ran into two of the participants of the firefight.  
  
And they were NOT their fellow agents...  
  
Two massive creatures, so massive that a Muton would look like a puny doll next to one of these blue-skinned monstrosities, were shooting at the two agents outside, desparately trying to defend themselves behind their vehicles.  
  
The aliens didn't realize that two more humans were sneaking up behind them.  
  
Garner and Whitman both had their Lawpistols already drawn.  
  
They fired into the creatures backs. The lead bullets, while being very small, were designed to pierce hard armor.  
  
Still, this wasn't quite enough to kill these creatures, as purple alien blood oozed out of the deep wound in their backs, but they didn't fall.  
  
Instead, they turned toward Garner and Whitman with an astonishing quickness.  
  
Both agents were completely shocked by the creature's huge mouth, filled with teeth.  
  
These things were like walking blue sharks with guns.  
  
And the guns! Now that one was pointed at him, Garner had a clear sight of it.  
  
He NEVER seen anything remotely aproaching this thing before!  
  
A metallic grey saucer, similar to an old-fashioned satellite dish, was connected to an organic device that looked like a telescopic tube of hardened pudding, or something like that. This weapon was difficult to describe.  
  
And soon, Garner would know, FEEL, it's effects upon human flesh...  
  
But not today.  
  
As Garner and Whitman both poured bullets into the creature's faces, desparately trying to bring them down before they fired off a shot, a bright red laser beam struck right in one of the creature's feet.  
  
It collapsed, falling backwards, away from the cornered agents.  
  
Fortunately, these things apparently weren't too smart, as the second one turned to look what had brough down the demice of his buddy, a laser beam struck out again, connecting with the vile monster's face, finishing it off for good.  
  
Garner approached the injured creature, and kicked the weird gun out of its hand before it could recover.  
  
He did the right thing - the creature recovered in no time, but by now the place was crawling with reinforcements - the Xcom combat agents, heavily armoured and armed, wasted the creature and went on to secure the building.  
  
This was the beginning of the 3rd alien war.  
  
The war that will determine once again, if humanity is fit for survival...  
  
**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:  
  
Thanks to Hobbes, for pointing out that X-Com was dismantled only once, after the original invasion, and was NOT dismantled for a second time, after the destruction of T'leth. 


End file.
